In the early 1920s, the tram network operated by the Dudley, Stourbridge and District Electric Traction Company was struggling with raising maintenance costs and against competition from independent bus operators. An agreement was made with Birmingham and Midland Motor Omnibus Company Limited (BMMO—Midland “Red” Motor Services) where their buses would run along any tram route facing competition, in order to force said competition out of business. BMMO would pay the tram operator revenue from all ticket sales, and in return the tram operator would pay BMMO's operating cost calculated by the mileage operated.
With this agreement in place, BMMO started running Service 84B in 1924, between Stourbridge, Brierley Hill, Dudley, Tipton, and Wednesbury, following the Stourbridge to Dudley tram route and Dudley to Wednesbury tram route with one combined bus route. The bus service operated with a 15-minute frequency, and had the desired effect of putting the competition out of business. The bus service continued to run to deter other bus operators from trying to compete with the trams in the future.
As part of BMMO's simplified route number sequence, the route became Service 157 on Saturday 16th May 1925, then it changed again, this time to Service 245, on Saturday 11th February 1928, when route number allications were expanded to give more capacity. With the 1928 renumbering, BMMO also gave unique route numbers to short-working journeys for the first time, with journeys only running between Stourbridge and Dudley being Service 246 and journeys only running between Dudley and Wednesbury being Service 247.
BMMO's Harts Hill depot had originally been built as a tram depot to house the rolling stock used on the Stourbridge and Dudley route, among others. This site came under the control of BMMO in March 1925, and was converted to a working bus depot in under three months. Unsurprisingly, it's location on the route made it perfect for operating Service 157 , which later became Service 245 and Service 246, and thus from this time the large majority of buses used to operate these routes were based at this site. These were initially BMMO-built “Standard” SOS class of single-deck buses.
The Stourbrige to Dudley and Dudley to Wednesbury tram routes ceased operation on Saturday 1st March 1930, leaving BMMO as the only operator on these corridors. Journey frequency was significantly increased with a bus running up to every 3 or 4-minutes between Stourbridge and Dudley with Service 245 and Service 246 timetables combined, and up to every 10-minutes on the Dudley to Wednesbury section. These settled down to every 5-minutes and every 15-minutes respectively by September 1936, likely due to double-deck buses being introduced on the route during the early 1930s.
By the start of 1931*, Service 248 had been introduced for short-working journeys operating only between Stourbridge, Dudley and Tipton. However, in the January 1931 timetable Tipton was not shown as a timing point so it's not possible to tell the difference between Service 246 and Service 248 journeys from that publication! Thankfully this oversight had been corrected by the time the July 1932 timetable was printed, and it showed a significant number of Service 248 journeys running throughout the day on Saturday only.
BMMO's involvement with these routes ended on Sunday 2nd December 1973, when operation of all local Birmingham and Black Country services passed to West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive (WMPTE) from the start of business on the following day.
* It is highly likely that Service 248 was introduced when the trams were withdrawn on Saturday 1st March 1930, but unfortunately I have not been able to find documented evidence of this.
| 2 | 4 | 5 |
| September | 1936 | Stourbridge ↔ Brierley Hill ↔ Dudley ↔ Wednesbury |